Although earlier this year Facebook was testing a new 10-point review scale rather than the traditional five, the platform seems to have now turned on its heels and gone further in the other direction instead.

Currently rolling out to local business pages on Facebook is a Yes/No ‘Recommendations’ system, which is suspected to be completely replacing the current star-rating system. Although the average rating out of 5 shown on the page will remain, it will only take into consideration past reviews and new recommendations.

At present, Facebook haven’t opened the recommendations functionality up to API, so once reviews are officially turned off, reputation management software providers across the world will be scrambling to make up for the lost data.

Facebook Rich Endorsements

This isn’t the only update coming to local business reviews. As part of the recommendations process, users can leave ‘Rich Endorsements’, which include photos and text. This function, currently exclusive to restaurants and coffee shops but expected to roll out to other industries, makes the recommendation-leaving process easier by suggesting attributes (or ‘tags’) for the user to select, in a move that’s remarkably similar to Google My Business’ subjective and objective attributes.

These updates will significantly reshape the way local businesses go about requesting and treating Facebook reviews. One positive is that the process of requesting a recommendation is simpler: asking customers to ‘leave a recommendation’ is quicker for the business and the user.

However, with the absence of gray area, Facebook recommendations run the risk of only collecting feedback from people with more severe opinions. In the past, even people on the fence about a business could leave a 2-3 star review, but in the brave new world of recommendations, those without strong opinions may refrain from leaving any feedback. The upshot of this is that local business pages could start receiving a lower rate of reviews (but this could also be tempered by rising rates due to the easier process).

Reputation Managers will need to focus more on the content of recommendations as there’s less gray area.

With the range of quantitative responses reduced from five to two, those monitoring and acting on Facebook reviews and recommendations will need to pay more attention to the content of the recommendation, as that’s where you’ll fill the customer experience knowledge gaps left by the removal of neutral star ratings. Expect way more recommendations in the vein of ‘I would recommend this place but…’.

Take note that none of this means that only recommendations will be shown on the page. Users are able to leave a message answering the question ‘How could [Business Name] improve?’ and these will be published to the page if the user chooses to do so (rather than sending private feedback, which is still an option, though a convoluted one involving adjust recommendation privacy).

5-Star Reputation Management Tools

Request, track and respond to online reviews for a business reputation worth shouting about

Making Facebook Recommendations ‘Authentic’

In stark contrast to the difficult, clunky and dramatically underused process needed to report fake Google reviews, Facebook has announced that, in order to keep recommendations ‘authentic’, users and Facebook page owners will be able to report recommendations for:

Recommendation not relevant

Unfair recommendation

Nudity

Violence

Harassment

Suicide or Self-injury

Spam

Drugs

Hate Speech

Now, I know what you’re thinking – there’s nothing specific for fake reviews left by review networks, bitter ex-employees and even more bitter rivals, but I think we can take a wide view of ‘unfair’, ‘not relevant’ and ‘harassment’ and use the closest that matches our fake review.

It’s going to be really interesting to see how these updates the Facebook reviews and recommendations impact overall average star ratings across platforms. Will reputation management tools take a Facebook recommendation as the equivalent of a five-star rating, leading to inflated average star ratings, or will they try to separate these types of customer feedback from the rest of the five-star pool?

We’d love to hear what you think

Is this going to mark the start of a trend across review platforms? Do ‘Yes/No’ reviews help or hinder the reputation management process? Do you recommend Facebook’s new Recommendations system? (Yes/No)

Let us know your experiences with Facebook reviews and recommendations in the comments below.

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39 thoughts on “Facebook Is Switching Review Ratings to Recommendations”

This update has only hurt our business. We have all 5-star reviews from the previous system and since the update all positive recommendations. Our rating is now down to 4.7. We are a travel company and this is a huge part of our reputation. We contacted the FB staff (this link is the ONLY way we can find to reliably connect with FB staff: https://www.facebook.com/business/form/chat#) and they had no answers for us. Please contact them and let them know this update is detrimental to your business as well (if that is your experience). If anyone has gotten a clear answer on this I would love to hear a clear explanation as to why this new system is superior than the old one when high-spending customers are getting penalised without cause. Many thanks

We worked hard with our Customers to graciously encourage absolutely genuine reviews of my App and earned a score of 4.9-Stars over 160+ reviews. There certainly were a few 2, 3, and 4-Stars and nearly all of these had respectable explanations. In fact, the overall 4.9-Stars Rating looks even more realistic than 5-Stars.

Now those well written reviews (or at least *diverse* reviews from all sorts of real people) are hidden. A few folks are leaving recommendations – all positive so far, but 23 Recommendations is not the same as 150 x 5-Star Reviews at all!

And just today, suddenly Facebook says I am 5-Stars “based on the opinion of 120 people” … What about the opinion of the other 40 absolutely REAL people?

My business page is not displaying the correct numbers in my Reviews and Ratings, FB is damaging my business by doing this, please fix this now.

Yesterday FB displayed “5 out of 5, Based on the opinion of 49 people” Today, FB is only displaying “5 out of 5, Based on the opinion of 32 people”, Why? I have 38 Five star ratings readable on the page. Recommendations is displaying 10 people, however I can only view 3 people, Why?

People who are looking for a service glance at the total number of either 5 Stars or the amount of Recommendations. The numbers displayed on my page have been altered by FB, and need to be fixed by FB to show the correct amount.

Facebook you are damaging my business; if this cannot be fixed I will post an article on FB about this and move to another page provider. I would consider paying for advertising through FB, however if you can’t get the issue above fixed, there is no way I would paying for other FB services to ruin my business.

Please FIX this, and have the courtesy to reply to me, let me know personally what is going on, and when you will fix this.

Hi Anita, it can be very frustrating having to respond to big changes in review strategy. Luckily, BrightLocal’s Reputation Manager now features the ability to reply directly to Facebook Recommendations from within the platform, allowing you to grow recommendations by providing a great response quickly and effectively!

Hi Simon, while I can’t comment on the likelihood of Facebook to reply to your comment here (you never know!) I can empathize with your situation and, as you can see from the other comments here, you’re not alone. However, I think it’s worth mentioning that BrightLocal’s Reputation Manager now features the ability to reply directly to Facebook Recommendations from within the platform, allowing you to grow your reputation on Facebook by providing responses immediately and showcasing your fantastic customer service.

Completely agree! How are we supposed to integrate our previous, REAL feedback from customers into this new system? Instead of integrating, it seems Facebook is just mindlessly dismissing the validity of old 5-star scale ratings and it’s terrible. One of my pages went from ‘based on’ 89 people down to 54 and now this morning it’s up to 72??? What is going on?!

Thanks for your detailed info. I have created a fan page (local business) on 25 sep, in the page i can see only reviews tab only, if i click there see “No Rating yet” i do not have any recommendation option there. all of my friends are asking me how to recommend my page, i could not answer. can you please tell me where did i made the mistake, “https://www.facebook.com/oitihyejamdani/”

I know it’s frustrating to feel like Facebook has dumped you back at square one, but some small solace can be found in the fact that everyone’s been affected the same way, so it’s a bit more of a level playing field. Still, just in terms of the pride felt by looking at positive feedback, it was a massive kick in the nethers. I agree they haven’t handled it well.

Does this mean that if a person shares an honest bad review, they can be flagged as having written a harassing or unfair review? Who makes that determination? If a business was incompetent which resulted in someone being harmed, and that someone leaves a review stating the truth about it, does the recommendation get taken down for being “unfair” because someone who doesn’t know the whole story decides it shouldn’t be there?

I can only see reviews on the business page of the company I work for. Laptop, desktop, phone…..all the same. My wife is able to see recommendations on her phone and same computers we share under her fb account. The customers leaving recommendations are not visible under reviews. Any thoughts of how I can get to view customers recommendations?

Has your business been shared as a recommendation yet? These won’t show up until they have been recommended. You can find this in the Insights tab of your Business Page – it might be worth changing the timeframe to see if this helps.

Alternatively, you might want to head into the Templates and Tabs section and double check that reviews are switched on.

So where are theses recommendations? I keep having them left on my page but I cant see them on my page! I still only have the few reviews I had.as most of mine have come through as recommendations, which is great accept nobody can see them. so I look like I haven’t had a review in a month, which isn’t so good. so my question is, are the reviews ever going to be displayed? I have gone in to the settings but theres not a recommendations tab on my desktop.

Hi Wayne, that seems odd, as the Recommendations should definitely be displayed on your page.

In your Reviews tab, make sure you’re clicking ‘Most Recent’ as the recommendations should be displaying here. The ratings score is now based on recommendations and reviews. It’s possible that Facebook allows people to leave non-public recommendations, which would explain why they’re not being displayed, but I’m afraid I’m not 100% sure about this.

Hi Julian, Facebook will be taking recommendations into consideration when choosing what rating to display but as yet it’s not known how. I think it’s likely that this social proof point will be removed once Facebook has been new review-free for a while.

Thanks for the write up. Great to get this info earlier rather than later!

Any idea on how to set this up for a page? I know there was an earlier Facebook “Recommendation” tab, but this sounds like it is not just a simple enhancement of that old feature, and attempting to set up that tab isn’t the answer (not that I can find it anyway.)

Perhaps we’ll need to just wait to see if/when it rolls out to our pages.

Very interesting. I think most have already asked some of my same questions and concerns (thx Jamie for your quick replies btw). @Sherry yes! Please make Yelp go away. I don’t personally believe these “recommendations” will be valuable to consumers… I personally (when searching out a restaurant or local business) look through at least 5 to 7 reviews… I unconsciously (now that I think about it) look through a mixture of 1 to 5 stars reviews… I actually search them out. This helps me understand if this was just a “complicated customer” or a “valid” assessment of the local business or place… we’ll see!

Will the past reviews still be on the page? Or completely removed with the recommendations?

Is the search field going to align with recommendations more? Will Facebook now start creating notifications for people who were looking for coffee shops previous, saying things like “98 people recommend coffee shop x near you”

I have so many questions – I work for a dealergroup and consult for other dealer groups – trying to get a handle how we should present this to our staff, and should we be brand focused or experience focused now.

Happy to help if I can! I know that past reviews will indeed still be visible on the page and, for now, at least, the review score will still be used. But they may well change to number of recommendations. Not sure about the search field, though, I’m afraid!

What this is really doing is putting that quantity of reviews/recommendations in the driving seat, rather than the actual content of the review/recommendation. Because you’ll see number of recommendations so prominently (and perhaps, as you say, in the search field), the thing that’s really being pushed forward is popularity over quality of service.

Previously you could get five five-star reviews and be sitting pretty with an avg star rating of 5. In the world of recommendations, meanwhile, getting just 5 recommendations, while not inherently a bad thing, will put your business way behind competitors with 50+ recommendations. Previously, both businesses could have fought on a even field as long as their star ratings were high.

Putting prominence on popularity over experience is a clever way for Facebook to drive businesses to get more recommendations, and more activity on Facebook means better stats to show investors!

Very curious to see how this unfolds. I agree that it leaves a real gap being only binary… it will be interesting to see if FB end up flipping on this decision to move away from the commonly-accepted 5 Star Rating scenario. Time will tell!

Thank you for this article! There isn’t much online about the changes and you gave a lot of information. My company has one main page and 15 location pages. I’m eager to see how all these changes work. I feel like I have a million questions, but I’m guessing with time I will figure out all the answers.

Thanks for the feedback! So glad this post was helpful. Yes, there isn’t a great deal out there about it considering what a significant change it is. It will be interesting to see how this pans out, and if other platforms follow suit.